My Experiments with Truth

 

Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where - Rubaiyyat, Omar Khayyam, Persian poet and mathematician (1048 - 1131)

I tipped the freshly opened quarter bottle of whiskey and drained it without a pause, ignorant of the poet of Nishapur and his rhyme.  What prompted me was not existential angst, but a dare.  It was 1982 and I was at my friend Arvind's house.  I'd never had alcohol before.  As a strong-headed 15 year old, I believed that getting drunk was a sign of mental weakness, that "it was all in the mind".  So when Arvind produced a 185 ml bottle of whiskey and conspiratorially offered me a small sip that was "guaranteed to lay me low", I scoffed.  Just a sip? I  would down the entire bottle in a gulp and nothing would happen "because I would not permit it."  I steeled myself for the act to follow, much as contemporary endurance artist and illusionist David Blaine might do prior to one of his performances. 

Rubaiyyat, Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, illustrated by Willy Pogany (1920)

I spluttered and choked as the undiluted Scotch seared its way down my gullet.   I hadn't expected this, but a dare is a dare and I drained the bottle.  Arvind rushed to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of ice cubes, which I  swallowed whole in an effort to staunch the burning sensation in my throat.  He waited expectantly for me to either pass out, throw up or launch into song.  The minutes passed.  After about 10 minutes, I declared victory.  I looked at Arvind and said "See, no problem".  I walked back home in the hot Madras sun, sat down with my grandparents (with whom I lived at that time) and proceeded to down a hearty tiffin of dosas, mango chutney and curds.  There was not so much as a whiff of alcohol in my breath and it was obvious to me that my mental strength and resolve had completely neutralized the whiskey.

Years later, I would learn that extreme concentration of mind or heightened emotional states can result in a temporary manifestation of extraordinary abilities, the familiar cliché of mothers being able to lift cars of their trapped child being an example of this.  More interestingly, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and other texts refer to siddhis or yogic abilities that can spontaneously manifest when practicing dhyana, or concentration meditation:

The Five Inferior Siddhis:

You can know the future, present and past.

You are unaffected by dualities like cold and heat.

You can know the thoughts of others.

You can stop the effects of water, fire and poison.

You cannot be conquered by others.

The inferior Siddhis are relatively common. 

Many people can use one or more of them.

Another thing I didn't know was this admonition:

Attaining and using psychic powers is a huge trap. You must devote time and energy to getting the power. Then, when you have your power, using it grows your pride and ego.

It turns out this warning applies equally to smug teenagers and arrogant yogis, and pride, as the saying goes, cometh before the fall.  A few weeks later, the neighborhood gang had gathered after lunch at my friend Sunil's house.  His parents were away for the day.  A large 750 ml bottle of whiskey was produced, and eager to show off my new found talent, I proclaimed I would down the entire bottle, "neat".  I'll skip the gory details, but suffice it to say I nearly died of alcohol poisoning that afternoon.  I drank, I blacked out, I woke up puking over the bed, and then continued to throw up all over Sunil's house (which probably saved my life).  I left Sunil with the unenviable task of explaining the empty bottle and trashed house to his parents.

The story has a deliciously ironic ending.   My grandparents were going to see the movie "Gandhi" at 4 pm that afternoon.  I was supposed to mind the house while they were away.  It was only around 4:15 pm that I could muster enough strength to wobble back home and collapse on a chair in the verandah.  I was still soaking wet from having been given a shower (fully clothed!) in Sunil's house in an effort to sober me up.  My grandparents gave me a quizzical look or two, not knowing what to make of my condition, and then dashed off to watch Gandhi take the moral high ground in India's fight against British colonialism.  On my part, I foreswore further Experiments with Truth and cannot so much as take a sip of whiskey to this day.  

My Experiments with Truth, An Autobiography, MK Gandhi

Post Script: It goes without saying that treating alcohol or any other drug with disrespect can kill you at any age, whether your goal is to show off to your friends or develop advanced yogic abilities.  Don't do it. 

A Dagger to the Heart

It was 2006 and we were vacationing in the Yucatan Peninsula in the south of Mexico, with time and more to spare for the end of the world foretold by the Mayan Calendar on Dec 21, 2012.  Jokes aside, the Mayan calendar is still in use today and so precise that their 365 day Haab calendar has an error of only 1 day in 6729 years, while our “modern” calendar has an error of 1 day in 3236 years.   One of the highlights of our trip was Chichen Itza, which dates back to 600 A.D. and was one of the largest cities of the Mayan Empire and includes architectural wonders like the 100 ft high Temple of Kukulcán.  This stepped pyramid, marvel of new world engineering has a dark and gruesome side.  It was the site of human sacrifice carried out in ceremonies of colossal scale, at which upwards of 20,000 victims were sacrificed at a time in bloody offerings to the gods.  In these many day-long rituals, the still-beating heart of the victim would be cut out with a sacrificial knife made of flint and offered to the deity.  

Temple of Kukulcán or El Castillo, Chichen Itza, Mexico

Despite this terrifying history, Chichen Itza is considered to be an "energy vortex" and attracts new-agers in droves for its supposed powers of healing and rejuvenation.  When told about this by the local guides, I rolled my eyes in skepticism.  We spent the rest of the day taking in the sights and returned to our nearby motel for a well-earned night's rest.  

Mayan Obsidian Dagger

At the time, I had the habit of doing 20 minutes of yogic breathing or pranayama prior to bedtime, and had been bothered for over a year by a tight and painful catch at the base of my sternum that prevented full expansion of my lungs.  I would frequently play with this spot with my fingers trying to massage out the soreness, to no avail.  That night, pranayama complete, I nodded off to sleep.  The vivid and hyper-realistic dream that that I experienced later in the night was out of a new age playbook.  In it, I was lying on my back with my chest bared.  A bald headed female Buddhist monk in saffron robes stood next to me holding an obsidian dagger.  She gazed into my eyes intently, yet kindly, in a Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One kinda way.  "I am going to press the dagger into your chest and it will hurt", she said "but the tightness you've been experiencing will go away".  I nodded my consent.  An intense, searing pain tore through me as she pressed the blade into me just under the ribcage.  

Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One, Dr. Strange (2016)

I sat bolt upright in bed with a gasp, panting heavily.  It was pitch dark and Bhavna and Meghna were fast asleep.  What.  Was.  That.  I wondered.  I felt the spot at the base of my ribs and the tightness was gone.  In the following days and weeks, my pranayama was smooth and effortless, with not a hint of discomfort.  In disbelief, I kept waiting for the tightness to return, but it never did.   I am no more a believer in energy vortices today than I was before, but this incident from 2006 has left me a little warier of Chichen Itza, a place where the priests imposed a reign of terror and rivers of blood flowed copiously.  

Post Script:  I want to stress that many, many nations and cultures have a bloody past, not just the Mayans.  The Spanish Inquisition was cruel and vast in its scale.  Slavery and genocide were part and parcel of the colonization of North America, and its legacy lingers on.  Nazi Germany needs no introduction.  The caste system in India continuous to oppress large segments of the population.  So on and so forth.  

A Cry at Midnight

The following incident, worthy of a 1970’s supernatural thriller, occurred when I was a child.  I present it below as narrated to me by my mother. 

"When you were about two years old, you required corrective surgery on your feet for a tendon related problem.  We lived in New Delhi at this time, and the procedure was to be performed at the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).  Leading up to the surgery, a plaster cast was applied to your feet for a few weeks to stretch the tendons out.  By questioning whether the plaster cast had been applied correctly, I earned the wrath of the junior doctor – let’s call him Dr. J - who performed this procedure. 

 All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi

The surgery itself was eventually scheduled for early 1969 and since the senior doctor – let’s call him Dr. S - was planning to travel in April of that year, your grandparents and I didn’t go through with the usual process of looking up the almanac for an auspicious day for the surgery.  In fact, the date set by the hospital was inauspicious per traditional reckoning, but neither your grandparents nor I raised any objections given Dr. S’s calendar constraints. 

A few days prior to the procedure, I had a vivid and disturbing dream, in which Dr. S came out of the operating theater calling out in alarm “Mrs. Krishnan, Mrs. Krishnan... where is Mrs. Krishnan...?”  A voice in the dream announced, “a vein has been cut and there is bleeding….”.  I ignored this dream, putting it down to my own nervousness.  The day before the surgery, we went to a temple to seek blessings.  As the priest walked up to us with the Aarthi or divine flame, it suddenly blew out as though by a sudden gust of wind.  I dismissed this omen also. 

         

The Fault in Our Stars

The next day, we were admitted into a general ward in AIIMS, a dormitory-like space that we shared with multiple other patients.  In the evening, who should come on his rounds but our old “friend” Dr. J.  You beamed at him, upon which he remarked “Now he's smiling at me. He doesn't know that tomorrow, I'm going to be the devil in the theater.”  I ignored even this chilling comment, putting it down to a tasteless attempt at humor. 

As evening came, you started crying for no particular reason and wouldn’t stop.  The patients around us tried to cheer you up, but to no avail. Eventually, night arrived and we both fell asleep, with you sandwiched between me and the wall against which our bed was set.  Suddenly, in the middle of the night, you woke the entire ward up with a piercing scream.  The lights came on and what should everyone see, but a copious amount of blood splattered all over the front of my white sari.  I examined you closely, but you showed no sign of pain and no trace of any injury, not even so much as a scratch.  There was simply no explanation for your scream and all this blood. 

Surgery preparations would start by 8 a.m. At 7 a.m., I met Dr. S in his office, shared the incident of previous the night to him, and said I wanted to call off the surgery.   He was very understanding and readily agreed.  We drove home and the family, grandparents included, were all relieved that the surgery had been put on hold.  Now home, you played around as though nothing had happened.   We eventually had the procedure done in Madras at a different hospital."

We pride ourselves on living in scientific and rational times, but this would have been one omen too many for most folks.  And you, dear reader, can credit this post that you are reading to a series of portents from more than a half-century ago.